Modified asphalt is considered one of the alternatives to address the problems of deficiencies in traditional asphalt concrete, as modified asphalt addresses many of the issues that appear on the pavement layers in asphalt concrete, resulting from heavy traffic and vehicles loaded with loads that exceed the design loads and the large fluctuations in the daily and seasonal temperatures of asphalt concrete. The current study examined the role of polyphosphoric acid (PPA) as a modified material for virgin asphalt when it was added in different proportions (1%, 2%, 3%, 4%) of the asphalt weight. The experimental program includes the volumetric characteristics associated with the Marshall test, the physical properties, and th

The experimental and numerical analysis was performed on pipes suffering large plastic deformation through expanding them using rigid conical shaped mandrels, with three different cone angles (15◦, 25◦, 35◦) and diameters (15, 17, 20) mm. The experimental test for the strain results investigated the expanded areas. A numerical solution of the pipes expansion process was also investigated using the commercial finite element software ANSYS. The strains were measured for each case experimentally by stamping the mesh on the pipe after expanding, then compared with Ansys results. No cracks were generated during the process with the selected angles. It can be concluded that the strain decreased with greater angles of con

In the literature, several correlations have been proposed for bubble size prediction in bubble columns. However these correlations fail to predict bubble diameter over a wide range of conditions. Based on a data bank of around 230 measurements collected from the open literature, a correlation for bubble sizes in the homogenous region in bubble columns was derived using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) modeling. The bubble diameter was found to be a function of six parameters: gas velocity, column diameter, diameter of orifice, liquid density, liquid viscosity and liquid surface tension. Statistical analysis showed that the proposed correlation has an Average Absolute Relative Error (AARE) of 7.3 % and correlation coefficient of 92.2%. A

The study aims to evaluate the removal of sulfur content from Iraqi light naphtha produced in Al-Dora refinery by adsorption desulfurization DS technique using modified activated carbon MAC loaded with nickel Ni and copper Cu as single binary metals. The experiments were carried in a batch unit with various operating parameters;  MAC dosage, agitation speed, and a contact time of 300 min at constant initial sulfur concentration 155 ppm and temperature. The results showed higher DS% by AC/Ni-Cu (66.45)% at 500 rpm and 1 g dosage than DS (29.03)% by activated carbon AC, increasing MAC dosage, agitation speed, and contact time led to increasing DS% values.  The adsorption capacity of MAC results was recorded (16,

Coal fines are highly prone to be generated in all stages of Coal Seam Gas (CSG) production and development. These detached fines tend to aggregate, contributing to pore throat blockage and permeability reduction. Thus, this work explores the dispersion stability of coal fines in CSG reservoirs and proposes a new additive to be used in the formulation of the hydraulic fracturing fluid to keep the fines dispersed in the fluid. In this work, bituminous coal fines were tested in various suspensions in order to study their dispersion stability. The aggregation behavior of coal fines (dispersed phase) was analyzed in different dispersion mediums, including deionized-water, low and high sodium chloride solutions. Furthermore, the effect of Sodium

We consider the problem of calibrating range measurements of a Light Detection and Ranging (lidar) sensor that is dealing with the sensor nonlinearity and heteroskedastic, range-dependent, measurement error. We solved the calibration problem without using additional hardware, but rather exploiting assumptions on the environment surrounding the sensor during the calibration procedure. More specifically we consider the assumption of calibrating the sensor by placing it in an environment so that its measurements lie in a 2D plane that is parallel to the ground. Then, its measurements come from fixed objects that develop orthogonally w.r.t. the ground, so that they may be considered as fixed points in an inertial reference frame. Moreov

In cognitive radio system, the spectrum sensing has a major challenge in needing a sensing method, which has a high detection capability with reduced complexity. In this paper, a low-cost hybrid spectrum sensing method with an optimized detection performance based on energy and cyclostationary detectors is proposed. The method is designed such that at high signal-to-noise ratio SNR values, energy detector is used alone to perform the detection. At low SNR values, cyclostationary detector with reduced complexity may be employed to support the accurate detection. The complexity reduction is done in two ways: through reducing the number of sensing samples used in the autocorrelation process in the time domain and through using the Slid

Terrestrial isopods play an important role in the biodegradation of many wastes which gives agreat importance in the nutrient cycles and ecosystem services , therefore this paper aims to use species Orthodillo chiltoni (Vandel, 1973) as a model organism in bioremediation of urban environment with municipal wastes, agricultural fields, parks and markets wastes. Samples of these wastes included potato peels, orange fruit leaves, thyme plant and sawdust,cardboard residues , the experiments were carried out in laboratory condition similar to the living environment of this species in terms of temperature, humidity and intensity lighting. The applied results have shown that

Diamond-like carbon, amorphous hydrogenated films forms of carbon, were pretreated from cyclohexane (C6H12) liquid using plasma jet which operates with alternating voltage 7.5kv and frequency 28kHz. The plasma Separates molecules of cyclohexane and Transform it into carbon nanoparticles. The effect of argon flow rate (0.5, 1 and 1.5 L/min) on the optical and chemical bonding properties of the films were investigated. These films were characterized by UV-Visible spectrophotometer, X-ray diffractometer (XRD) Raman spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The main absorption appears around 296, 299 and 309nm at the three flow rate of argon gas. The value of the optical energy gap is 3.37, 3.55 and 3.68 eV at a different flow rate o